19 April 2008

Video On Demand: First (positive!) Experience

In some respect I'm a little behind the "bleeding" edge in technology, and VOD (video-on-demand) is one of those areas.

Today was the first time in my life I paid money (5Euro) to watch a streamed video (the thirdgame in the German DEL (ice)hockey playoffs, with my favorite Cologne team playing Berlin).

It's filmed and streamed by Premiere, the imho leading German pay-TV giant.

At first I tried with Firefox on my Mac - but was informed by the Premiere system check that their DRM (digital rights management) requirements are not met. So I tried my old Dell Windows machine - which immediately played the system test trailer...

I had to register - that was a real nuisance: At least three times their payment-management system wasn't available - so I had to re-enter my data again...

The image and sound quality is very acceptable, and the price (5 Euro) was ok for this event(although the game finally ended up with my favourite team loosing in the last few seconds...)